Global Seminars leave lasting impressions

For participants in CU-Boulder’s Global Seminar in Tanzania the past two summers, the program is long over. Yet several of the students were so inspired by the experience, they’re still engaged with the program.

They’re working to bring a safari guide they met during the program, which focuses on conservation and indigenous peoples, to campus this spring for the Conference on World Affairs.

The guide is Maggie Duncan Simbeye. She is one of only five female safari guides in Tanzania among thousands of male counterparts. She’s vastly familiar with the area’s ecology. And she’s the founder of DARE, a Tanzanian foundation for women that provides outreach on HIV/AIDS, ecology, youth education and micro lending.

The students hope the visit will not only reunite them with Simbeye, but also help her increase her organization’s impact providing benefits to women and children in Tanzania.

During the Global Seminar in Tanzania, Simbeye assists faculty leader Laura Deluca, a CU-Boulder anthropology lecturer who directs the program. Simbeye drives one of the Landrovers that carries students and camps with the groups, teaching them about wildlife ecology and sharing insights about local cultures.

“Maggie is an amazing woman who has the power and dedication to change and educate many,” said Morgan Geiger, CU-Boulder sophomore in education and psychology, and a 2013 participant in the Tanzania global seminar. “She has a light and hope about her that all people should experience.”

While CU-Boulder’s Global Seminars are administered through Study Abroad Programs in the Office of International Education, they're designed and led by faculty in a number of countries and fields, from doing business in China; and gender, race and tourism in Cuba; to human rights and democracy in Israel; and ecology and evolution in Ecuador. The seminars offer small-group learning with other CU-Boulder students and typically are a few weeks long during the winter or summer.

“The Global Seminar gave me a new view on the world around me,” said Geiger. “At the same time, the program opened my eyes to a Swahili expression, ‘Wote tunaona anga moja,’ which means, ‘We all see the same sky.’ In other words, we’re all human.”

Geiger plans to participate this summer in another Global Seminar focusing on entrepreneurship in Cape Town, South Africa. She also aspires to be a Peace Corps volunteer.

The Global Seminar in Tanzania alumni are holding two fundraisers to bring Simbeye to campus for the Conference on World Affairs:

Tanzanian Tapas -- Saturday, Jan. 25, from 5 to 7 p.m. at 916 11th St. in Boulder. The event will include food, tea, music and chapatis-making (flat bread). The suggested donation for community members, faculty and staff is $15 and up. The suggested donation for students is $7 and up.